Chapter 54 - 3#
Of course, Zheng Hong knew better.
Several of those jade bottles had in fact passed through his own hands on their way to Jingzhe.
He knew they had come from Rong Jiu.
What he hadn’t expected was how effective Rong Jiu’s medicines would turn out to be.
Some of them could fairly be called lifesaving.
Something like that would naturally attract attention and envy. Fortunately Jingzhe had enough history to make a convincing excuse, and Zheng Hong himself could spin a lie without effort. Lai Tie had nothing left to do but swallow his envy.
Jingzhe came again in the afternoon.
Zheng Hong saw him at the door and couldn’t help sighing. “What are you here for?”
Jingzhe: “I came to check on you. Why are you making that face?”
Zheng Hong, if he were being honest, didn’t entirely want to see Jingzhe. Not out of any negative feeling — only fear that someone in the room would let slip something they shouldn’t.
What had actually happened to him, Zheng Hong had never intended to tell Jingzhe.
“That look on your face is going to make people think you’ve been up to something behind my back,” Jingzhe said, carrying in what he’d brought, not looking up as he said it.
Which meant he didn’t catch whatever shifted in Zheng Hong’s expression.
Jingzhe, of all people—
Was that an accidental hit, or did he actually suspect something?
Zheng Hong tested the waters a little and decided it was genuinely accidental. Jingzhe had no idea what had happened. And yet a casual throwaway remark had immediately put him on edge. This person was a headache.
Jingzhe, unaware of Zheng Hong’s private commentary, was looking him over carefully.
Apart from the coughing, he seemed more or less intact. Dragged back from the edge, more or less.
Zheng Hong, uncomfortable under the scrutiny, said, “Stop staring. You’re the one who’s been coming most often.”
Jingzhe gave a small, smug look. “Friendship shows its face in hard times. You should appreciate having someone like me around. Now pay up.”
He held up five fingers.
Just acquiring the medicine from the imperial pharmacy had cost Jingzhe twenty taels.
Money in the palace didn’t behave like money anywhere else. One blink and the purse was empty.
His monthly allowance was decent — better than Huiping’s by a fair margin — but his expenses were equally substantial, and since he’d started setting money aside to give Rong Jiu, there wasn’t much left over. He’d had this particular reserve saved for emergencies.
Which was exactly what this was.
Zheng Hong hauled himself up with effort and dug into his front, producing a small pouch, which he threw at Jingzhe.
Jingzhe caught it and tilted it experimentally. The coins inside clinked. He stared at it. “You sleep with your money?”
Zheng Hong: “Is that a problem?”
Jingzhe: “How do you sleep properly like that?”
Zheng Hong: “Fine. I sleep fine.”
His deepest aspiration was to fill every corner of his room with silver and gold and lie in the middle of it all. What was wrong with that?
Jingzhe was still turning the pouch over in his hands. He had never seen Zheng Hong part with money this easily. Prizing coins from that man was like taking something vital from him.
Zheng Hong seemed to know what he was thinking. He coughed. “Whatever my life is worth — it’s still worth more than money.”
Jingzhe finally smiled. He placed the pouch back beside Zheng Hong.
“I’m glad you’ve figured that out. Think of this as money for getting your strength back.”
He waved a hand and returned the pouch.
He didn’t stay long. Zheng Hong seemed steady enough, and Jingzhe left before long.
Shortly after, a few men with swollen, discolored faces filed into the room and arranged themselves around Zheng Hong.
He had been talking with them before Jingzhe arrived, and had told them to make themselves scarce when Jingzhe appeared.
Zheng Hong had built something of a foundation in the Office of Miscellaneous Purchases by now — he wasn’t as free and easy as Jingzhe.
“Remember what I said.” His voice went cold. “Whatever happened that day stays inside your mouths. You don’t say a word to anyone. And if one of you brings trouble down on yourself and gets killed, don’t look to me for revenge.”
Zheng Hong wasn’t Jingzhe. He didn’t have the same excess of goodwill. He would take a risk for Jingzhe, but he wouldn’t shoulder other people’s burdens.
He knew very well that someone like Lai Tie was already poking around, trying to piece together what had happened. All the more reason to let it rot away in silence.
The people they had encountered that day were not ordinary people.
The reason Zheng Hong was keeping his mouth shut, biting down on it, was simple: he didn’t want that oblivious person causing himself trouble over nothing.
He was just one worthless life. Not worth it.
Jingzhe walked quickly, head down.
He’d been busy lately. Winter had arrived in the blink of an eye, and there was no shortage of things to manage in the Directorate.
Jiang Jinming had asked him, at some point, whether he wanted to move out.
He had been a second-rank eunuch for a while now. Sharing quarters with Huiping past a certain point started to look a little incongruous.
Jingzhe didn’t particularly care either way, and didn’t want to move.
Moving to the second-rank quarters — he knew people there, but none of them kept their mouths shut the way Huiping did. He had lived with Huiping all this time without a single one of his secrets leaking out, not by the slightest sliver.
Anyone else would have started asking questions long before now. And no one else would have quietly covered for him the way Huiping did.
Jingzhe took a few quick steps and came through a palace gate, turning to go — then stopped.
He looked up, pleasantly surprised.
Rong Jiu was standing at a distance.
Jingzhe hadn’t seen him in some time. The last message he’d sent was that things had gotten busy, and he might be late. One missed visit had become two.
It was early winter now. Jingzhe had gone from light clothing to thick layers, and the chilblains on his hands had returned as reliably as always. He was never very good at caring for himself — like his unruly hair.
He jumped down from the step and crossed over to Rong Jiu in a few strides.
He hugged him properly, then looked up with a smile. “You’re cold as the weather. You’re cold as the air.”
Rong Jiu’s mouth had pressed into a line that was dangerous in its tension — the shape of a smile that wasn’t warm. He was cold to hold, cold even through the layers, as if the warmth had been drained from him entirely, leaving only something unmoving.
Jingzhe reached up instinctively to touch the side of his neck, felt a pulse beating steadily under his fingers, and withdrew his hand with an awkward feeling.
Rong Jiu was studying him without warmth — that precise, cutting look, as sharp as something that wanted to split him open. There was something underneath it, too, faint but present. A quality of danger that had settled into the space between his brows like a gathering storm.
Jingzhe said quietly: “You’re unhappy?”
Or rather — very, very unhappy.
He could feel it. Whatever was contained in Rong Jiu right now was like volcanic rock sealed beneath layers of ice — still alive, still moving, pressing against every crack, looking for any available release. Dangerous beyond description.
“You’ve had a lot to deal with lately, it seems.”
Rong Jiu said it slowly. His tone, given everything, was remarkably mild.
Jingzhe said carefully: “Not especially. Just the usual kind of things to sort out.”
He looked at Rong Jiu.
“You’ve been the busier one.”
Two missed visits didn’t happen for nothing.
The cold breath coming from him, carrying something close to bloodlust — was he busy?
Probably.
There was a faint smell of blood clinging to Rong Jiu that even the clean fragrance of orchid couldn’t fully cover. When Jingzhe moved closer, the metallic sweetness became more distinct, as if it had settled just at the edge of his nose.
He rarely asked about things like this.
Asking too many questions only meant disagreements, and it was simpler not to know.
But the mood Rong Jiu was in was genuinely alarming. After a moment’s hesitation, Jingzhe asked: “Are you unhappy because of me, or because of something else?”
Rong Jiu watched him for a long time.
People who trained in martial arts tended to hold themselves very straight. Rong Jiu’s back was always perfectly upright. When that cold, judging gaze swept over Jingzhe, he could barely tell whether Rong Jiu was looking at him or, through him, at something he despised.
That fierce look — as if he wanted to devour him.
Then the gaze sharpened, and Rong Jiu moved — an easy, unhurried reach of the arm, pulling Jingzhe in.
Jingzhe stumbled, colliding with Rong Jiu’s chest.
His eyes watered from the impact. He pressed a hand to his nose, making a pained sound. “Rong Jiu, what are you doing.” He was fairly sure he’d almost flattened his own nose.
The arm around him looked effortless but was anything but — it locked around Jingzhe’s ribs with a force that felt like it could snap something. The voice that reached him was controlled in the way of something held down by its own weight, pulled so taut it was close to breaking. “I saw something dirty.”
His cold gaze moved past Jingzhe’s shoulder to the turning in the passage not far behind them.
Those dark eyes went deeper. Light seemed to stop at their surface, absorbed and gone.
It was the look of something that hunted — suppressed, patient, and ready.
Killing someone in front of Jingzhe might be one thing.
But eliminating filth with Jingzhe watching — even with Rong Jiu’s particular nature, he understood this was not acceptable.
At the turn of the passage, Mingyu was dragging Yunkui by the arm.
They had both come looking for Jingzhe that evening and happened to meet on the way, and had arrived together — which meant they had both arrived to see this.
Yunkui’s eyes were wide — not just from the shock of what he’d witnessed, but from the face and the presence of the person he was looking at.
“…That’s not Jingzhe’s friend Rong Jiu, is it?”
He looked down at Mingyu.
There was involuntary fear in his voice.
Mingyu swallowed. “It is.”
He hadn’t seen Rong Jiu for some time. Whatever the man carried with him now — it was worse than before. That moment of eye contact had nearly brought Mingyu to his knees.
And Yunkui, that oblivious giant, had actually been thinking about going over. Was he out of his mind?
Yunkui let out a breath. “…So that’s what Jingzhe’s friend is actually like.”
He was seeing the legendary figure for the first time.
He rubbed vigorously at his arms. The goosebumps wouldn’t go down.
“He’s dangerous,” Yunkui said. “How does Jingzhe have a friend that frightening?”
He knew Jingzhe was good at making friends.
But this was too much, even for Jingzhe.
Mingyu was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully: “Coincidence. Just a coincidence.” He touched the side of his own neck — the gesture had a reflexive, slightly stunned quality.
Was it — an illusion?
He had the distinct impression that Rong Jiu had wanted to take off his head. Had that kind of intensity been there before? In his memory, Rong Jiu had always been cold and dangerous — but cold implied a certain flatness of feeling, a lack of strong emotion.
What had that been just now?
That look, for a fraction of a second, had felt like pure venom — as if Rong Jiu had wanted to strip the life from everyone in view. As if — he didn’t want them in Jingzhe’s presence at all.
A pure, violent possessiveness.
Mingyu’s heart hammered, and he pressed it back down with effort.
“I don’t think,” he said, remarkably calmly, “this is a good time to talk to Jingzhe.”
Yunkui leaned out for another look. “They’re gone.”
Mingyu followed him out and found the spot entirely empty. Only dry leaves drifting down, narrating the cold that had been there.
“That means they still have things to discuss.”
Mingyu murmured this, and hoped whatever discussing they were doing was going smoothly.
Jingzhe stumbled along, barely able to see straight. Rong Jiu had his arm, then his shoulder — less a hold than a restraint.
He was pressed in front of the man, unable to even raise his head.
“Rong Jiu, put me down.”
Jingzhe was shorter than Rong Jiu, and when Rong Jiu chose to keep him elevated, Jingzhe’s feet couldn’t quite reach the ground. He stretched his toes as far as they would go and only managed to skim the surface, never finding solid footing.
Being strong was really not that impressive.
He complained internally while actively worrying about his ribs.
“What did you actually see?” he asked, managing the effort through the awkward angle.
Rong Jiu said, unhurried: “Something dirty. Something I want to destroy.” The thing flickering in his eyes was like physical killing intent — wild, unconstrained, sweeping over everything, always prepared to take more.
He seemed to remember something, and looked down at Jingzhe.
Remembered, finally, to lower him.
Jingzhe stumbled and barely found his feet, and a question crashed over him before he’d finished steadying.
“Such a repulsive sort of thing — better to root it out early, before it spreads and keeps multiplying… Jingzhe. What do you think?”
Jingzhe’s fingers caught Rong Jiu’s arm — a reflex, initially, from needing something to hold onto. But now his grip tightened, tighter, as if only that could hold down the trembling that had started somewhere unreachable.
His fingertips went white. Even his throat felt locked.
He opened his mouth automatically, and looked at Rong Jiu with a blank, lost expression.
A silence hung between them.
Inexplicable malice concealed beneath an ordinary question. Rong Jiu looked like something rigid and pale — inhuman — and then when the corner of his mouth curved, the cold rigidity dissolved into something sweet, and poisonous, and deeply compelling.
Jingzhe didn’t make a habit of asking about what Rong Jiu did outside of these meetings. On the rare occasions it came up, the answers he gave could be interpreted as agreement.
He had no idea that a careless word from him might decide the weight of something enormous.
Not knowing didn’t mean the weight wasn’t real.
And in this moment, Rong Jiu was quietly, gently — seeking a nameless permission.
Like an arrow already drawn.
One syllable, and the killing would begin.